156-315.81.20 Gateway Deployment and Upgrades Practice Question
During a Connectivity Upgrade of a cluster, what happens to the traffic when the first member (Member A) is being upgraded and is currently down?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often fear that upgrading one member will cause a total network outage. They misunderstand that cluster failover is specifically designed to handle traffic seamlessly during maintenance windows.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Member B takes over all traffic and maintains existing session states.
The goal of a cluster upgrade is to maintain availability. When one member is taken offline for an upgrade, the cluster's failover mechanism ensures that the remaining members take over its traffic. In a Connectivity Upgrade, this is managed carefully to ensure session persistence.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Traffic is dropped until Member A returns with the new version.
Why it's wrong here
Dropping traffic is the opposite of what a cluster is designed to do. If traffic were dropped whenever a member went down for maintenance, there would be no reason to use a cluster for high availability. The other members are specifically there to prevent this type of outage.
- ✓
Member B takes over all traffic and maintains existing session states.
Why this is correct
In a cluster environment, if one member becomes unavailable, the other member(s) will detect the failure and take over the traffic processing. In a Connectivity Upgrade scenario, they specifically maintain the session state so that users do not experience any disconnection during the transition.
- ✗
The Management Server takes over traffic inspection temporarily.
Why it's wrong here
The Security Management Server is never part of the data path and cannot inspect or forward network traffic. Its role is strictly for policy management and logging. Traffic must always be handled by an active Security Gateway member within the cluster.
- ✗
The cluster enters 'Down' state and requires manual traffic routing.
Why it's wrong here
The cluster should remain in an 'Active' or 'Pivot' state (depending on the mode) rather than going 'Down'. Manual routing is not required because ClusterXL uses Virtual IP addresses and MAC addresses to automatically handle the failover at the networking layer.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Check Point exam blueprint
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